Aberdeen

"External examiner" is one of those roles, unseen probably in the wider world, that nonetheless keep the academic world rolling on. How can we all be satisfied that the courses at a particular university are any good? One of the methods is to invite somebody from another university to come along and have a wee look once or twice a year: an "external examiner". We all do this for each other. So courses may still be rubbish but they'll be sort of uniformly rubbish across the whole sector, there shouldn't be any particular islands of unique outstanding rubbish.

I've just taken on the role of external examiner for Aberdeen's Science Access course. I have to say I really enjoy this particular sort of service, meeting colleagues in other universities and learning how they go about things and how they think about their work. Earlier this week I went up to Aberdeen for the day and met the staff and tutors. I liked what I saw up there, a course like ours where academic standards are maintained and students introduced to rigorous thought and study; and where we do our best to help them cope with the rest of their lives at the same time as they feel their way into new ways of thinking and amazing new possibilities: all the stuff that doesn't show up in Quality Assurance forms. It was so nice to be reminded that there are others who haven't given up on the potential of people and the worth of ideas, or surrendered to the prevailing, managerial culture that values nothing that can't be summed up in crude, summary statistics. How do you measure "personal growth"? Doesn't matter, we know it when we see it!